Episode 5 – “The stuff of life”, Mental Health Awareness week

Last week in the UK was Mental Health Awareness week, and the Good Sports took the opportunity to find out about a couple of initiatives close to home that are using sport to address mental health in their communities.

Opening Up

First, we meet mark from Opening Up. Based out of Sefton Park CC, Opening Up are working with the communities of players at cricket clubs across the UK to promote mental wellbeing and raise awareness about mental health.
You can follow them on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Creative Minds

Then, Lee speaks with Alex from Creative Minds, a charity hosted by South West Yorkshire NHS Foundation Trust. They discuss how Creative Minds uses a range of activities, including sport, to support service users in South West Yorkshire, and how they use creative methods to evaluate these projects.
You can follow Creative Minds on Twitter and Facebook

Our key takeaways:

Tapping in to pre-existing sports communities is a great way to reach hard-to-reach groups such as young men. Packaging messages in a way that makes sense to participants, for example by linking them to professional athletes, is a smart entry point for sports people.

Needs analysis and evaluations that match the intervention; playful, creative, needs-led, are exciting opportunities for sport4dev organisations to better understand the impact of their projects.